Nanotechnology's everywhere NEW YORK - If you're worried that nanotechnology is going to contaminate the Earth and needs to be stopped before it destroys the human species, well ... heh-heh ... too late! Last week, I stopped by the NanoBusiness 2005 conference just off Wall Street. The overarching theme: Nanotech isn't just a lab experiment anymore. It's spreading fast and in some surprising ways.
For that matter, you'll probably slather nanotech all over your face this summer. It's in sunscreens and sun-blocking lotions. It's in quick-drying paint. It might be in your pants.
Perhaps most dazzling of all, nanotechnology can be used to manufacture diamonds that are all but indistinguishable from mined diamonds - a profound development that could eventually cut into traditional diamond sales the way Tylenol pushed aside aspirin.
And the impression is that there is so much more right around the corner. Nanotech is finding its way into drugs, diapers, walls and pesticides. A study by Lux Research found that 3,800 nanotech patents have been issued so far, and 1,777 more are pending.
One nanotech product, carbon nanotubes, has become so common that a company at the conference hawks them like a used car salesman. The company is called Cheap Tubes, and its slogan is: "We search the world for the highest quality, lowest cost carbon nanotubes so YOU don't have to!" Which is helpful, because I wouldn't know a carbon nanotube if it bit one of my skin cells.
Nanotech really is becoming this generation's plastic. If you're over 40, you remember when everyday stuff was made of metal or wood: car dashboards, the players in table hockey games, office desks, golf clubs. Plastics turned out to do most of those jobs better and cheaper, and so plastics spread to every part of our lives.
In a lot of cases, that's what nanotech is doing, but on a more sophisticated level.
Nanotech refers to any substance that is engineered at the scale of a nanometer, which is about three to five atoms across. By messing with atoms, an engineer can alter a substance so it does new tricks.
Take paint. I met Rich Stromback, who runs Ecology Coatings and is perhaps the only nanotech CEO who used to be a minor league ice hockey goon (1989-90 Erie Panthers stats: 7 goals, 18 assists, 130 penalty minutes). As Stromback says, paint has worked the same for centuries: You put it on, then wait for it to dry. In a factory, the wait translates into a major holdup.
Ecology Coatings uses nanotech to create a "liquid solid." It flows but will not evaporate. Spill it on the floor, and it will be the same three weeks later - sort of like a McDonald's milkshake.
In a factory, the coating can be sprayed on like paint and then dried with an ultraviolet light in three seconds. "We're solving one of the last manufacturing bottlenecks," Stromback says
Also, paint has long served one main purpose: to add color. Michael Riedlinger, president of NaturalNano, says his company is working on paints with a property that could be turned on or off to block cell phone signals. It could be used in a concert hall, for instance.
Among other companies here, Nanophase makes nanotech particles that go into "everyday" sunscreens like Oil of Olay's Complete line of UV moisturizers. The particles block the sun but don't interfere with the lotion's feel and look.
Nucryst Pharmaceuticals engineers silver particles into infection-fighting bandages for burn victims. Products from Nano-Tex make cotton pants that repel water, now sold by Gap and Eddie Bauer. In a development that could truly improve the lives of millions, companies here talk of engineering diapers that never smell.
Then there's Apollo Diamond, which makes perhaps the most tangible of all nanotech products. The 20-employee Boston company spent 15 years figuring out how to construct a real diamond, one atomic layer at a time. Apollo seems to be the only company that can do this. Finding the right recipe is the equivalent of finding a particular grain of sand on a beach.
Now Apollo can make what it calls "cultured diamonds." They aren't fake. They are real diamonds, but man-made instead of forged over millions of years by intense underground pressure and heat. Jewelers can't tell the difference. The only way to know is to use sophisticated equipment recently developed just for that purpose by - surprise! - DeBeers, which controls about half the world's diamond market.
"If there's any example of how our material world can be turned upside down by nanotechnology, this is it," says nanotech consultant Jim Hurd.
Apollo has made gem-quality diamonds bigger than 5 carats. President Robert Sennott says Apollo is close to striking deals with major retailers, though he wouldn't say which ones. An Apollo diamond might cost one-third less than a similar mined diamond.
"The retail gemstone business is $60 billion," Sennott says. "We'd be happy with 2% to 3% of that, and we think we can get there."
If that's not wild enough, the real passion of Apollo is to make inexpensive diamonds to put into computer microchips. Turns out that properties of diamonds could help computers run far faster than they do today - at speeds that would melt silicon chips into goo.
Speaking of goo, that word didn't come up at the conference. A few years ago, a lot of people feared that nano-size machines would learn to replicate themselves in a process that could spin out of control until the Earth was covered in a gray goo, suffocating all life. Maybe that fear is subsiding.
A couple of times, though, someone in the audience raised health concerns about, for example, spreading nanoparticles on your skin day in and day out. But so far, no studies have shown that nanotech is harmful.
So instead of killing us, nanotech is bringing diamonds and odorless diapers. That's progress.